Labor’s project of economic transformation hit some harder realities as Paul Keating assumed the top job. And a new push on remaking Australia stirred a brooding reaction of its own.

Cubans were jubilant when president Barack Obama visited the island in March, but economic reforms have not progressed in line with the people’s hopes of change.
Ueslei Marcelino/ReutersNovember 1, 2016

As the haze lifts (in the short term at least) on Canberra’s leadership ructions, we can see the extent of the car wreck that is Australia’s economic reform agenda. “Political uncertainty hits business…

“Men make history,” Karl Marx wrote in 1859 in his Critique of Political Economy, “but not always in circumstances of their own choosing”. Whitlam himself would have chosen a different year to be his time…

Treasurer Joe Hockey plans to reignite the economic reform debate early next year, but will he tackle the bigger-picture changes many economists have called for?
AAP Image/Lukas CochOctober 13, 2014

In November 1990, then treasurer Paul Keating announced that Australia was in recession – and that it was “the recession we had to have”. Today, there are growing calls for serious, structural economic…